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Reddit unveils Community Intelligence at Cannes Lions 2025

Reddit launches AI-powered social listening and advertising tools powered by 22+ billion posts at Cannes Lions festival June 16.

Luis Rijo

• 6 min read
Reddit Insights interface showing Community Intelligence dashboard with topic search for "Hair Loss" and global analytics options.
Reddit Insights interface showing Community Intelligence dashboard with topic search for "Hair Loss" and global analytics options.

Reddit announced its Community Intelligence platform at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on June 16, 2025. The platform transforms the company's 22+ billion posts and comments into structured intelligence for marketing decisions. This marks a significant expansion of Reddit's advertising capabilities, introducing two early-stage products that leverage the collective knowledge from decades of human conversations.

The announcement introduces Reddit Insights (Alpha), described as a scalable, AI-powered social listening tool designed to unlock strategic value from Reddit's 20 years of conversations. According to Reddit, the tool provides precise, real-time insights informed by proprietary metadata. It helps marketers plan campaigns, validate creative ideas, and make business decisions based on authentic community discussions.

Summary

Who: Reddit announced the Community Intelligence platform with participation from alpha testing partners including Publicis, The Hershey Company, Comcast, Lucid, and Jackbox Games.

What: Reddit Community Intelligence transforms 22+ billion posts and comments into structured intelligence through two initial products: Reddit Insights (Alpha) for social listening and Conversation Summary Add-ons (Alpha) for enhanced advertising.

When: The announcement was made at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on June 16, 2025.

Where: The launch was announced from Reddit's Cannes HQ at the intersection of Prom. Robert Favre le Bret and Rue Buttura, with broader availability planned globally.

Why: Reddit aims to provide marketers with tools for authentic community engagement and data-driven decision making by leveraging two decades of human conversations, addressing the growing need for genuine consumer insights in an AI-dominated landscape.

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Conversation Summary Add-ons (Alpha) represents the second product powered by Community Intelligence. This ad feature dynamically integrates positive content from Reddit users directly below advertiser creative. The feature puts community conversations front-and-center in the user experience while blending AI-driven efficiency with real human perspectives.

Reddit positioned these tools as solutions for "a new era of community marketing" where brands can access Reddit's authenticity and connect with high-intent communities globally. The platform's Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong emphasized the timing, stating that "In a world increasingly flattened by AI, the value of human content on our platform only grows."

Performance metrics demonstrate commercial potential

Early testing of Conversation Summary Add-ons showed measurable performance improvements for participating brands. According to Reddit's data, the feature resulted in a 19% higher click-through rate compared to standard image ads. The addition also boosted ad relevance and fostered deeper connections between brands and communities.

Alpha testing partner Publicis has utilized Reddit Insights for multiple strategic applications. According to Joel Lunenfeld, US CEO at Publicis Media Exchange, the tool "has revolutionized how we understand and present brand sentiment – delivering authentic, real-time insights from Reddit that go beyond mentions to reveal what people genuinely love or want improved."

Publicis teams deployed the tool for campaign planning to validate creative concepts against real consumer conversations and identify cultural moments. The agency also used Reddit Insights for competitive intelligence, analyzing how peers are perceived across Reddit's billions of posts and comments. Product development applications included discovering unmet consumer needs through community-driven feedback analysis.

Brand health monitoring capabilities allow tracking brand sentiment over time and help manage reputation. Cultural analysis features enable forecasting cultural shifts early for proactive marketing strategy development. For clients including The Hershey Company and Comcast, Publicis teams discovered new audiences, identified opportunities to increase brand awareness, understood overall brand sentiment, and engaged impactfully on Reddit.

Automotive sector demonstrates practical applications

Lucid, the Silicon Valley-based technology company, participated in the Conversation Summary Add-ons alpha test to highlight genuine conversations about their brand. The company wanted to surface discussions about their award-winning Lucid Air sedan and new Lucid Gravity SUV that were already happening on Reddit.

According to Akerho "AK" Oghoghomeh, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Lucid, "In today's advertising landscape, consumers want more than polished campaigns. They're looking for validation from people like them." The feature enables Reddit users to more easily find conversations from knowledgeable and passionate owners while learning about Lucid's models from those with authentic, first-hand experience.

The implementation allows Lucid to surface relevant discussions to Reddit's engaged audiences, particularly those interested in cars and electric vehicles. This approach makes it easier for people to discover content that aligns with their interests and Lucid's presence on the platform.

Gaming company Jackbox Games also participated as an alpha tester of Conversation Summary Add-ons, though specific performance metrics for their implementation were not disclosed in the announcement.

Technical infrastructure builds on extensive data archive

Reddit Community Intelligence leverages the platform's 22+ billion posts and comments accumulated over two decades. The system turns this vast repository of human conversations into structured intelligence through proprietary metadata and AI-powered analysis.

Reddit Insights operates as a global focus group accessible through digital interfaces. The tool eliminates traditional barriers to social listening while offering precise data at scale. Whether identifying emerging cultural insights, validating creative concepts, or monitoring brand health, the system provides strategic value from Reddit's conversation archive.

The platform's announcement emphasized that these products represent just the beginning of Reddit Community Intelligence capabilities. Looking ahead, the company plans to introduce additional innovations that "redefine how brands deliver smarter outcomes while remembering the human."

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Marketing industry context and implications

The announcement comes as social media platforms increasingly compete for advertiser budgets through enhanced targeting and measurement capabilities. Reddit's recent advertising developments have shown the platform's growing focus on performance marketing, with Dynamic Product Ads reaching general availability and delivering 2x higher return on ad spend for advertisers.

The social listening market has seen significant expansion, with Sprinklr's Reddit integration demonstrating enterprise demand for comprehensive Reddit analytics. That partnership provided businesses with unified social listening, advertising, and analytics specifically for Reddit through Data API and Advertising API integration.

Reddit's approach differs from traditional social listening tools by focusing on community-driven insights rather than broad social media monitoring. The platform's unique position as a discussion-focused network provides context-rich engagement opportunities that traditional social media platforms cannot replicate.

The introduction of AI-powered tools aligns with Reddit's broader technology strategy. The platform recently launched Reddit Answers, an AI-powered search feature that helps users find relevant community discussions through conversational interfaces.

Platform accessibility and engagement opportunities

Reddit's Cannes HQ was located at the intersection of Prom. Robert Favre le Bret and Rue Buttura, operating Monday, June 16 to Friday, June 20 from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM (CEST) for scheduled meetings. The space remained open to all Cannes Lions badge holders Monday through Thursday from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM daily and Friday from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

Press inquiries are directed to press@reddit.com, while sales team meetings can be arranged through reddit-events@reddit.com. The company encouraged guests to RSVP through their dedicated website for the event.

The announcement builds on Reddit's growing influence in digital marketing, with the platform ranking as the sixth most searched term globally according to Google Trends data. A Reddit Custom Survey from August 2023, sampling 8,000 U.S. adults aged 18-60 who use social media monthly, positioned the platform as a significant source for product and brand decisions.

Reddit's unique community structure provides marketers with access to engaged, high-intent audiences organized around specific interests and topics. The platform's discussion-focused format enables deeper engagement compared to traditional social media platforms, where content consumption often follows a more passive model.

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